Responsibility to Others
If food makes my brother stumble, I will never eat meat, lest I make my brother stumble.
1 CORINTHIANS 8:13
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Responsibility to Others
In keeping with Christ's example, your strength should take [your brothers'] weakness upon itself until they, too, become strong. For if we live by the spirit and in love, we do not live for ourselves; then we live for our brothers. Therefore we shall do what is serviceable and necessary for them." "Owe no one anything," says Paul, "except to love one another" (Romans 13:8); and in 1 Corinthians 8:13 he says: "If food is a cause of my brother's falling, I will never eat meat." Why? Because I love my brother, and his salvation is incomparably more important to me than my freedom, by which I am free to do what he does not yet understand to be permitted. Thus if my righteousness, wisdom, capacity, or any action whatever that is entirely permissible to me causes my brother to fall, I must give it up and render service to love.
From Lectures on Galatians (1519) (Luther's Works 27:384)
1 CORINTHIANS 8:13
+
Responsibility to Others
In keeping with Christ's example, your strength should take [your brothers'] weakness upon itself until they, too, become strong. For if we live by the spirit and in love, we do not live for ourselves; then we live for our brothers. Therefore we shall do what is serviceable and necessary for them." "Owe no one anything," says Paul, "except to love one another" (Romans 13:8); and in 1 Corinthians 8:13 he says: "If food is a cause of my brother's falling, I will never eat meat." Why? Because I love my brother, and his salvation is incomparably more important to me than my freedom, by which I am free to do what he does not yet understand to be permitted. Thus if my righteousness, wisdom, capacity, or any action whatever that is entirely permissible to me causes my brother to fall, I must give it up and render service to love.
From Lectures on Galatians (1519) (Luther's Works 27:384)
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